Cultivating Indifference
by KSCrusaders
Summary: Being a Spectre takes a certain kind of personality, and it doesn't take long for Commander Shepard to realize she and Saren have more in common than anyone ever realized, especially when it comes to dealing with trauma.


_Disclaimer and author's note: I don't own Mass Effect; that'd be the geniuses at BioWare. The Shepard featured in this psychological vignette will be in future ME fanfics._

Cultivating Indifference

It's not easy to be Saren.

Not easy to wish destruction on everyone in the galaxy. Not easy to tune out the screams of a dying prisoner. Not easy to watch, heartless and dry-eyed, as colonies burn and good people die.

Not easy to care about nothing and no one.

I of all people should know how hard it is to be like Saren, because I've tried. God knows I've tried, and maybe that's why I'm here. Maybe the Council and the Systems Alliance figured it takes one to know one, and that's why I'm in pursuit of a Spectre gone rogue.

Spectre. The word's enough to send chills down anyone's spine. It doesn't matter if you're a law-abiding, goody-two shoes citizen who believes in faith, family, and hard work, or a hardened criminal marauding along the edges of Citadel Space. It's not the license to kill, torture, and connive that's scary; any military personnel could get that license given the right time and circumstances.

It's the will to use that license that turns people's blood to ice. Saren was right about that--being a Spectre doesn't just mean being able to do what's necessary. It means being willing to do what's necessary.

Willing to leave innocent civilians behind to save a vital military target. Willing to ignore the pleas of a captive being tortured for critical information. Willing to exchange the lives of ten allies for the destruction of an enemy's supply chain. Willing to sacrifice friends to kill enemies.

And most importantly, willing to accept the consequences. To do what no one else wants to do. To take the weight of the galaxy on your shoulders.

To damn yourself, so others don't have to.

It takes a certain kind of person to be a Spectre. It takes someone like Saren. Someone like me. Someone who, to a certain degree, really couldn't give a damn about petty people and their petty grievances. Someone whose soul's been through the meatgrinder enough that a few extra scars won't show.

Someone who can't be hurt, can't be touched--someone who's been through too much for more to make much of a difference.

I'll bet that's why Captain Anderson didn't get Spectre. I know Saren set him up, but the more I know about my new role in the galaxy, the more I realize that Captain Anderson couldn't be a Spectre if he tried. He cares too much about people. He offers his heart and his strength to anyone in need. He feels their pain, joy, and despair, and that's what drives him. Don't get me wrong; he's the closest thing I've got to a father, and a brilliant military man. But he's not a Spectre.

Me? I'm a Spectre. Ideal Spectre material. No family, no attachments--not even memories. I suppose I should be grateful for my lot. Experimental surgery for an illegally modified L2 implant isn't something most twelve-year-olds are allowed to survive. Hell, most fetuses don't even survive eezo exposure in utero. All in all, most people woud say twelve years of childhood memories are a small price to pay for deadly biotic abilities and rare military opportunities.

I'd have to agree with them. It's not like you could call it much of a childhood anyway. Running with the gangs, dealing with older men making passes at you, being everything from decoy to gun fodder...bit of a far cry from dolls and parents.

I owe so much to Giles. If not for him, I'd find it a lot easier to be like Saren. He showed me that good people exist, even in the criminal underworld. Giles cared about his team. He provided social services and protection to lower class families since the government couldn't (or more likely, just didn't). He paid for kids to go to school if they showed talent. And he only stole from the rich bastards who could afford it.

Well, the rest is history after my adolescence, and here I am. My crew looks to me to stop Saren. The Alliance looks to me to prove humanity's worth. And everyone else is scrutinizing my every move with a microscope, waiting for me to make a mistake.

But I stopped making mistakes a long time ago. Making mistakes isn't an option anymore. Making mistakes with people gets you torn to shreds from the inside out. Making mistakes on a mission gets your team members killed and leaves you to scavenge their corpses for supplies.

I know what Saren knows. I know why good officers make terrible miscalculations. Because they're just that--miscalculations, and they come from looking at the mission the wrong way. Mistakes come from seeing the mission in terms of people and feelings.

A mission is an equation. It's that simple. It's a math problem to be dissected, a delicate balancing act of variables. All it requires is logic and the willingness to follow the logic to its conclusion. I'm not driven to protect people and improve their lives by _feeling_ what they feel. I only need to _know_ that they feel and take it into consideration along with everyone else.

I've been told I lack a moral compass, and I guess it's true. But compasses can be fooled by strong magnetic fields. Compasses can be broken. Compasses can just plain be badly made in the first place. I prefer to think of morality as a lighthouse or a beacon. I know where I'm going, but the path is up to me.

And for both me and Saren, part of that path was indifference.

Indifference is harder to come by than you think. Indifference needs to be grown, carefully cultivated and honed. Like all mindsets, it requires fertile soil. More specifically, it requires getting the shit kicked out of you over and over again until you finally realize that people of all species are bastards who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves.

And even that isn't enough. The lesson can't just be beaten into you. It needs to sink into your very DNA, turn your blood to ice and your face to stone, and change your heart to clockwork. It needs to completely replace your desire to feel with a compulsion to get the job done, no matter what the cost. Then, and only then, will you achieve true indifference.

In some ways, cultivating indifference is the ultimate selfish act. It means you get to look out for number one without giving a damn about everything else. On the other hand, it's the ultimate act of altruism. You deny yourself the luxury of feeling so that others may have it. You distance yourself so the masses may draw closer to one another.

But indifference doesn't exist in a vacuum. Weeds need to be pulled, invaders removed from the system...all the toil and tedium of maintaining any garden. That's where Saren succeeded and I didn't.

Saren assaulted himself with all his characteristic efficiency and brutality. He took every scrap of compassion, every shred of kindness, and systematically destroyed them. He dug out his heart with his own hands and fitted an engine in its place. And then, unsatisfied with mere indifference, he rebuilt himself from the bottom up so that necessity, driven by hatred, fueled every cell in his body.

I'm sure it was an excruciating process, and therein lies the only difference between Saren and me. I can't bring myself to do it. I don't have the guts. I can't bear knowing the last thing I'll ever feel is the cataclysmic rip as I tear myself from my fellow creatures. Indifference is gentle and kind after the initial beating--until you reach the brink and stare into utter oblivion.

Does that mean I'm still human? Does that mean I'm better than Saren? Somehow, I don't think it does. I tried to be like Saren. I tried to stop giving a damn about people. Oh God, I tried so hard. But I could never do it. Does me failing where Saren succeeded really make me a better person than he is? So far, I've yet to hear a convincing argument that it does, though several people have definitely tried.

I don't think I could have turned out much differently either, no matter how much therapy I went through. Some wishy-washy psychologists say that people like me and Saren had a choice. That we could have chosen to follow our hearts and continued to feel. Tell me, Doctor, how do you follow your heart when it doesn't function anymore? How do you face the cold indifference of the cosmos without some kind of protection?

Everyone has masks. Everyone has walls. Everyone hides themselves behind something or someone else. The only thing that separates me from Saren and us from everyone else is the degree to which we do it.

Believe me, I'd like to feel freely. I'd like to either be able to give a damn, or not give a damn at all. But it doesn't work that way for anyone, and I'm no different. Even Saren feels things: anger, hatred, and rage, but they're feelings nonetheless.

I'm quite sure I still have the capacity to feel. I haven't killed it yet, and I don't think I will. But I'm not willing to put it to the test. Only an idiot would leave her hand on a hot stove after being scorched once.

Only an idiot would open herself up to the galaxy and wait for the firing squad, and only a god could stop the bullets.


End file.
